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The Rules Are Different, but a Rivalry Remains

Safety Rodney Harrison celebrating one of the four interceptions the Patriots made against the Colts during the A.F.C. championship game in 2004.Credit
Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

INDIANAPOLIS, Jan. 18 — When the Indianapolis Colts stepped into a bitterly cold New England night three years ago, after their last appearance in an American Football Conference championship game, Tony Dungy had words of consolation.

They had endured a difficult defeat, he told his players after a 24-14 loss to the Patriots, but they would be back. He was right about that. The Colts and the Patriots will play another A.F.C. championship game Sunday, the latest installment of one of the N.F.L.’s most compelling rivalries.

What Dungy did not know then was the impact that memorable game would have on the Colts, the Patriots and the N.F.L.

Until that January night in 2004, the Colts’ offense had seemed virtually unstoppable, a ballet in cleats set on fast-forward. They had scored 10 touchdowns in 17 postseason possessions. Their punter, Hunter Smith, had not punted in two playoff games. Almost everyone anticipated the title game would be a chess match, full of move-for-move encounters between Colts quarterback Peyton Manning and Patriots Coach Bill Belichick.

Belichick, celebrated for his cerebral approach to football, took a cruder stance. He wanted a brawl and he instructed his players to hit the Colts’ receivers hard every chance they had. The strategy was called rerouting, and what it meant was that instead of Colts receivers going unimpeded to where Manning expected them to be, the Patriots rerouted them — shoving is a more precise term — until the timing of the pass patterns was so off that the plays were useless.

“This was probably the most simple game plan we had,” cornerback Ty Law, with the Patriots at the time and now with the Kansas City Chiefs, said after that game. “Just beat them up.”

Bill Polian’s face tightened when he recalled the game. Polian, the Colts’ president, was angered by how the Patriots played. No wonder. When it was over, when Marvin Harrison had been jostled out of the game plan, when the Patriots had intercepted Manning four times, the rest of the N.F.L. had its blueprint for stopping the Colts. The Colts also had their reputation for finesse play cemented, the Patriots were on their way to building a dynasty — they went on to win their second of three Super Bowls — and the National Football League had a rules issue on its hands.

“I give the Patriots great credit for what they did,” Polian said in an interview this week. “I won’t go beyond that.”

The National Football League eventually did, with Polian’s prodding. The following off-season, the league issued a point of emphasis edict from the competition committee about how defensive holding and illegal contact would be officiated. Since then, defenders have had to be more careful about touching receivers beyond the first 5 yards of a play.

Photo

The Colts turned the tables on the Patriots the past two times the teams met, including in a 27-20 victory this season when Indianapolis held off Corey Dillon and the New England offense.Credit
Winslow Townson/Associated Press

How important has that rule become? After the Colts defeated the Baltimore Ravens, 15-6, last week in a second-round game notable for an absence of touchdowns, Polian expressed concern on the Colts’ Web site that downfield contact was being overlooked.

Polian insisted he was concerned for the game as a whole — field-goal-heavy games are not viewer friendly — but no team is as threatened by manhandling as the Colts, who rely heavily on downfield threats. Polian might have been subtly sending a reminder to the officials before Sunday’s rematch with the Patriots.

“I wasn’t criticizing the officiating in that game,” Polian said of the victory against the Ravens. “I think it’s clear downfield officiating has been a little bit loose. That worries me for the sake of the game. We can play any style, as we proved last week. I worry about it in terms of the type of game you’d get if this is a trend.”

The Patriots defeated the Colts in two consecutive playoff games (they won the divisional game in 2005), but in the past two regular seasons, they have lost to the Colts. In November, the Colts won, 27-20, in Foxborough.

In a twist that turned reputations on their heads, it was the Colts’ defense that befuddled Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, who was intercepted four times. Marvin Harrison, a nonfactor because of the physical play of Law and safety Rodney Harrison three years ago, caught eight passes for 145 yards and 2 touchdowns. Manning was better able to throw on the run to avoid pressure.

The obvious difference for the Colts: Law is in Kansas City, and Rodney Harrison, a brutal tackler and the soul of the Patriots’ physicality, was injured on the first drive of November’s game and did not return. Harrison, who now has a knee injury, is doubtful for Sunday, leaving James Sanders and Artrell Hawkins as the likely safeties.

Neither Sanders nor Hawkins was with the Patriots for the first conference championship game against the Colts. And Dungy said that only 18 current Colts players took that wrenching walk out of Gillette Stadium that frigid night.

The impact of that seminal game lingers. The Patriots maintain their reputation for brilliant game plans. The Colts are still tagged as postseason underachievers. Defenders must watch their hands. But nothing lasts forever, not even a successful game plan.

“They change up the way they play us,” Dungy said this week about subsequent games against the Patriots. “So I don’t think there’s any particular one way to play us, any blueprint.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Rules Are Different, But a Rivalry Remains. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe